THE MORALITY OF SINAI

The Congregational Union has just completed its annual sittings, and the address of the Rev. Mr. James has attracted some attention outside as well as within religious circles on account of references which it contains to certain phases of current social and political life. The range which Mr. James takes is a very wide one. He defines Comtism as teaching that society must pass through three successive stages, the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific; and that the ascendancy of science or positivism will displace and destroy the theological phase. To this the answer is in brief that it "is sufficient to speak of Boyle, Pascal, Newton, and Faraday, as men who at once furnish the highest examples of intense religious belief, and the loftiest science, in harmonious combination." Referring to the principle of natural-selection, the theory of which as announced or Herbert Spencer is:—"That a certain elevated type of human being is produceable, and that the type desiderated is so desirable that the desire to produce it will create the will do do so." He rejoins— "And this pretty theory is broached in the face of day, in the truth of adverse historical testimony. and notwithstanding the absolute contradiction which human nature—with all its complex hopes and fears, its passions and aspiritions, its profound cogitations and untameable will—itself supplies Perhaps it is impossible to bring the physical type to a higher state of development than that which Greece in her palmiest days produced. The men were comely and strong, and the women fair and symmetrical; that their morals, nevertheless, could not be adopted by us to-day without throwing back our civilization in an immeasurable degree."
Communism he speaks of as essentially atheistic "with its travestie of New Testament doctrines, beginning at the wrong end, and yielding to the most reprehensible motives; levelling society, but always levelling it down towards the pit which is bottomless; equalising the various grades of life, but forgetting that until it can equalise character it will only produce a more exacerbating inequality than that which it seeks to destroy; and proving its zeal for the welfare of humanity by killing men without stint or compunction." Agnosticism he states is a "clear outcome of the unbelieving spirit of the age. Practically it has no God, and it therefore the evangel of indifferentism. Its ostentatious dolce far niente tone, its self-contemplation and seductive repose, its bland and egotistic epicureanism; its self-conscious indifference to all that lies beyond the domain of test and experiment; its sensuous limitation to the present and the material; its superfine sense of superiority; and its easy-going but utter ungodliness, indicate with startling plainness what its origin is, what its lotos-like and aimless character, and what its pernicious and destructive consequences must be. It is sceptical, not in the matter of miracles or inspiration merely, but of goodness, and God, and human nature. Having abandoned all faith in the power of high principle, it takes its direction from convenience and expediency; its only piety is the piety of conventional taste —the religion of Tito in Romola, or of Mr. Phœbus in Lothair; and all it cares for is to get along comfortably."
    Nihilism is spoken of as "Agnosticism running its 'natural course.' It is Atheism stripped naked, and standing with menacing attitude and threatening aspect in the pathway of the civilization of the world, denying that civilization further progress,and threatening with strident tones and blasphemous speech to explode and destroy it. It is Agnosticism with this virulent addition, that, while it declines to take note of the great moral facts of the universe it spends its research on negations, and proposes to constitute the future out of the nothings of its non belief." Mr. James says—"Spiritism, so called, is but a cheat both upon the senses and the soul. It professes to be exactly what it is not. 'An evil and an adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.' The truth which admits only of spiritual perception is not enough for it. It will hold only to what the senses can authenticate; its promises are limited by the susceptibility of matter; its ameliorations are confined to what science can supply; its ten commandments are at horrible parody of the clear, just, and eternal morality of Sinai; its gospel leads by scarcely concealed gradations to the brothel and the sty; its god is humanity with a big H; its inverted idolatry is therefore the worship of self; its standard of life is the will and desires of the individual ; and the heaven of its future felicity is only a state wrought out of the more flexible and potent elements of the material universe. Satan can transform himself into an angel of light. Spiritism is spiritual only on the lucus a non lucendo principle— spiritism without a scintilla of spirituality in it! It is the devil's last and highest masterpiece of materialistic atheism." His estimate of our political condition is any thing but flattering to the national vanity. "Our politics could hardly be mere selfish, anarchical, and pagan if they were the politics of a thousand years ago, and we only a disorganised mob, slowly and painfully passing from a state in which the wild justice of revenge was the only law. To me the most appalling feature of our social life, and the final proof of the depravity of man, are our selfish, partisan, and barbarian politics. We have established manhood suffrage—which I hold is man's inviolable right—without making the slightest attempt to define and settle what it is that fairly constitutes manhood. Manhood suffrage in the proper sense of the term we have not. What we really have is numerical suffrage, and that is little better than a monstrous parody of the true thing. The working classes have been long and unjustly excluded from political power. They have been governed from class standpoints, and have had to submit for generations to the inequalities of class legislation. But the still greater injustice has been done them that they have been excluded from the education which alone can fit them to exercise their right with safety, and to the advantage of themselves and others. In this country we have unfortunately reversed the proper and rational order; the cart has been put before the horse with a vengeance. Our system of national education should have proceeded manhood suffrage by at least a clear generation ; but the present mode of popular government has been in full swing for years, and we have not yet satisfactorily settled what form out national education shall take; the consequence of which will be that we shall have to encounter some very stormy times, and any real gain to just and lasting liberal ideas will have to be postponed for some years. Meanwhile, we must wait on the will of mere numbers with the best grace we may."

 The South Australian Advertiser 9 November 1880,